Keeping Our Seas Safe & Clean as a Marine Science Technician

Hi, my name is Courtney Perry. I'm a marine science technician first class in the United States Coast Guard. I initially wanted to go work for like FEMA or Red Cross, like environmental work or like disaster relief. I went to college for about just under two years and I wasn't doing so great. So my dad was like, you gotta, you gotta go do something else. He showed me like a little pamphlet for the Coast Guard and it had all these jobs listed. I'd never heard of the Coast Guard, had no idea what they did, and I saw marine science technician. I was like, yeah, this feels like a good route. I still get to learn all the things that I would have learned about it in college while getting to actively like do the job of helping people and the environment as much as I can. So my job as a marine science technician, one of the options we have is to do pollution response. So oil or hazardous materials, like the nasty stuff, we ensure that that's like cleaned up and it goes back to the way it's supposed to be. Other than that, we have facilities inspections and we make sure that everything's in good working order. And then the third like biggest job that we do is foreign vessel inspections and make sure that the vessel is not about to hurt anybody on board or the environment. I always think it's funny, people assuming that once I joined the Coast Guard, I sort of did like lose my individuality or that I'm really like strict and very like militant could not be further from the truth. You can ask anyone I work with like that is not true. You need that sort of individuality and you need different people who feel different ways and think different things to make a really good workplace. The Coast Guard is great about that. I know all kinds of people with all kinds of personalities. I like having a lot of downtime to just like play games or have morale days. But I also really enjoy going out into the field. It allows me to meet a lot of different people. You're working with big oil companies. You're also working with Fish and Wildlife or Department of Natural Resources. I've worked with Customs and Border Patrol. It's really cool that they trust me to do such a big job at my age and my rank. This job is really suited for people who want to make an impact in their community. I've learned a lot of leadership skills in the Coast Guard that I really didn't think I had. It gave me the confidence to make decisions and stand behind them, being more sure about the things that I'm doing, the decisions that I'm making, and like really standing on business, you know.